smarmy, snarky, sarcastic

Somewhere in the middle of high school an acquaintance I'd known since the fourth grade referred to me as smarmy. He'd been thinking about it for a while, biding his time until he stuck me with a good one. And he did. I've carried it with me for nearly a decade. At the time I'm sure I took it as a compliment. It's not a compliment. Not really. Not to me now, at least. In UrbanDictionary it's described as:

A certain attitude often accompanied by a squinty look and a superior smile that makes you instantly hate a person. Similar to snobby.

I took it as more or less that I was snarky, as opposed to it meaning I was insincere. The two often go hand in hand. Sarcasm, too, can often be perceived this way. It's a quality I have never grown out of, sarcasm -- despite a few years in high school where I was told by various youth leaders that my jokes and jabs, half-smiles and quick-to-the-kill-teasing hurt people's feelings. For me, I didn't really see the difference between a joke and kick to the mouth comment. If they elicited a smile, however unintended, my attitude at the time was a sort of blank stare, accompanied by a "Get over it. People are laughing." Definitely not said with a smile, instead delivered as a matter of fact, you're the one with the problem face. Most of the time, it still is.

After a while I decided making lots of semi-friends and keeping them around was more important than making friends that I could share in my oddly specific and funny insults with. Sometimes I wish I'd made those friends though. The ones who really got me, along with the ones I ended up with. In a lot of ways I think my comedic sensibility was stifled to avoid hurt feelings. Obviously being nice to people is a good thing. I never would describe myself as heartless. To the contrary, I never mean to hurt people, not for real. More than once I've been the butt of a merciless mouth, eliciting insults, some which I don't think healed properly. A common thought to describe Brigid Marshall as a 16-year-old was "She can dish it out, but she can't take it." Not too long ago it was said again.

Everyone has that though. Everyone has something that they're not truly over. And to that I try to tell myself, "Get over it." Eventually I will, until then I better learn to laugh at myself more. Self-deprecating humor really kills -- carrying stuff around for too long makes your arms heavy.